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Lamborghini gets to work on Huracan LP610-4 Super Trofeo

We all know the story of how Automobili Lamborghini got its start. The short of it is that Ferruccio, who had already started a successful tractor business, wanted to stick it to Enzo Ferrari, so he started making sports cars of his own. Lamborghini, however, never embraced motorsports to the same degree that Ferrari has - dabbling in Formula One engines in the early '90s and the occasional foray into GT racing - but these days the Raging Bull marque is getting more serious about racing. It partners with Reiter Engineering to field competition versions of its road-going supercars, and organizes its own one-make series with individual championships around the world.
That's where the new Huracán comes in. While the Ferrari Challenge has progressed from the 348 to the 355, 360, 430 and now the 458, the Lamborghini Super Trofeo has always been centered around the Gallardo. That's because the series only kicked off in 2009, and the Gallardo had been in production since 2003. But now that the Gallardo has been replaced by the Huracán, the Squadra Corse team is hard at work on their new Super Trofeo racer.
To that end, Lamborghini has recruited racing drivers Fabio Babini and Adrian Zaugg to conduct development work on the Huracán LP 610-4 Super Trofeo. Babini is a GT racing veteran who took a class win at Le Mans in 2001, while Zaugg came up the formula racing ladder, competing on A1GP and GP2 before signing on as a Lamborghini factory driver.

Why Italians are no longer buying supercars

Italy is the wound that continues to drain blood from the body financial of Italian supercar and sports car makers. The wound was opened by the country's various financial police who decided to get serious about superyacht-owning and supercar-driving tax cheats a few years ago, by noting their registrations and checking their incomes. When it was found that a rather high percentage of exotic toy owners had claimed a rather low annual income - certain business owners were found to be declaring less income than their employees - the owners began dumping their cars and prospective buyers declined to buy.
Car and Driver has a piece on how the initiative is hitting the home market the hardest. Lamborghini sold 1,302 cars worldwide in 2010, 1,602 cars in 2011 and 2,083 cars in 2012 - an excellent surge in just two years. In Italy, however, it's all about the ebb: in 2010, the year that Italian police began scouring harbors, Lamborghini sold 96 cars in Italy, the next year it sold 72, last year it sold just 60. The declines for Maserati and Ferrari are even more pronounced.
Head over to CD for the full story and the numbers. What might be most incredible isn't the cause and effect, but where the blame is being placed. A year ago the chairman of Italy's Federauto accused the government of "terrorizing potential clients," this year Luca di Montezemolo says what's happening has created "a hostile environment for ­luxury goods." Life at the top, it ain't easy.

Get a load of these crazy European Nimrods

I've been attending the Geneva Motor Show for the better part of a decade, and it's become my favorite stop on the entire show circuit, in large part because of all the exotic automakers, coachbuilders and green startups. I also love the Palexpo's consistently mind-bending displays of tuners, who typically work exclusively on six-figure automobiles. Some offer subtle improvements and personalization programs, but most seem hellbent on being more outlandish and bizarre than the next, a room full of millionaire class clowns. More often than not, I spy something and think to myself "What kind of Nimrod would do that to a perfectly good ____ ?" This year, that rhetorical question is in fact a self-answering one.
The jokes, they write themselves.
But seriously, if you're wondering who would take a perfectly lovely Ferrari 458 Italia or a Lamborghini Aventador and affix a wild body kit of dubious aerodynamic and aesthetic merit at great extra cost (both to the car's MSRP and to its assuredly grenaded resale value), the answer could very well be Nimrod Elite Tuning, a newer high-end restyling house out of Slovakia. That last locational tidbit might also explain the company's unusual name, which is likely a nod to a mighty Biblical hunter (descendant of Ham and a king of Shinar, Nimrod is mentioned in Genesis and Chronicles) and not meant to be taken as a synonym for "idiot" or "moron."